From Boomers to Millennials, Here are Workers’ Top 6 Benefit Needs

Do you know which benefits your employees crave the most? Take a look at this great article from Hr Morning about the top employee benefits for each age group by Jared Bilski.

Depending on which demographic they fall into (Baby Boomer, Gen-X, Millennial, etc.), employees have vastly different benefit needs. So why do so many employers offer a one-sized-fits-all benefits package?

Private exchanges — like public exchanges — are online marketplaces employers can use to provide coverage to their employees on everything from traditional benefits, like health insurance, to increasingly popular voluntary plans, like life, disability or cancer insurance.

Dinkin also used some compelling research to show just how greatly employees’ benefits needs varied from generation to generation.

Citing stats from a recent LIMRA study, which asked employees to rank their benefit needs, Dinkin laid out the top six responses of workers from 34 and under to employees 65-plus.

It’s worth noting that base pay was the top “need” for each and every employee demographic. The rest of the responses, however, were all over the map.

34 and under

The youngest workers in the study ranked their benefits needs in the following order:

base pay

career opportunities

retirement plan

low healthcare costs

bonus/incentive, and

flexible schedule.

35-49

The mid-life workers prioritized their benefit needs like this:

base pay

retirement plan

low healthcare costs

bonus/incentive

paid time off (PTO), and

flexible schedule.

50-64

Workers entering the latter stage of their careers ranked their benefit needs like this:

base pay

retirement plan

low healthcare costs

bonus/incentive

paid time off (PTO), and

type of work.

65-plus

Older workers tend to place a premium on the type of work they’re doing and the reputation of their employers. Their priorities are as follows: